My Work

IT People are Lazy Sods

Every company I have worked for, The first the I end up fixing is the most fundamental issues.. It amazing how many problems the following items cause and IT people CAN NOT BE TRUSTED.. This is another reason to move to the Cloud.

Time Synchronisation – I recall arguing for months on TIme Sycn should be configured. Sigh, its so easy, use a AD as your central time source, insure Virtual Machines don’t get time from the VMware agent. Insure you have a single time source that is synced to Global redundant time providers. Open the NTP,etc Insure anything that is not part of the AD Domain, is manualy added the NTP Settings. ITs best to setup a standalone NTP Server as well secure it..

Microsoft Updates – Make sure you keep ALL Windows Machines to the Latest. Install ALL Updates for god sake. The amount of time i argued with people over this.. Just freaking install everything, if u think u are smarter than Microsoft good for u.

Backups – Ask you IT person, how are the backups, then ask him to restore something. !

Any to Any Rules – You firewall will be just a swiss chess, lazy IT people wont both to secure the Firewall at all,

Documentation – Well, any IT person that doesnt document, should be fired. They keep this info in there head for Job protection, then again, u can’t blame them either.. I document so i can move up and out of that role to something better.

Dealing with Difficult IT People

Unfortunately this is a reoccurring theme when working in Technology. It is more prevalent in IT Operations and Delivery. The core problem is most of these people are men and not a single female around for a very large radius. The other is that most of them suffer from Aspergers. The last on list is that technical people’s value is judged on how much technical knowledge they posses and how much of that they can spew out in a conversation and not on delivery and solving problems.

A very smart person told me along time ago: There are two types of IT guys, the first guy can spend all his time telling you about the molecules in beer and the process of that beer getting brewed, but could not go to the bar and bring you a beer. The other of course can get the beer and also bring it to the table.

All of the brilliant engineers that i have worked with in technology are not like this and they tend to make allot more money than these people. The basic example, is that they will tell a user to Reboot the computer for every problem, but unable to educate the user to the reason why they should do that and fix it them selfs.

Some ideas :

Have a teflon shower in the morning. It all comes down to Diplomacy. In a time of war the diplomat could stay in the country and maintain his integrity and distance him self from the problem.

Understand you can not win any arguments with these people, this is all they have in their lives; is to come to work and point score on absolute nonsense.

Get away from the Fold, let the sheep work things out. You don’t need to be around this toxic personalities.

If it is important, work with management to come up with ideas and frameworks and solutions.

Don’t take it personally, mostly likely these people have issues in life and every person they come in contact with..

Keep your cool – All ways be nice and calm.. – You can’t fly like an eagle if you hang out with turkeys!

Pick your battles – It is not worth arguing over a command or a way to do it.

Spend your time on High value activities

Solve the Problem – Establish yourself as a strong problem solver with excellent people skills. Win more rapport, cooperation and respect.

common pattern with difficult people (especially the aggressive types) is that they like to place attention on you to make you feel uncomfortable or inadequate. Typically, they’re quick to point out there’s something not right with you or the way you do things. The focus is consistently on “what’s wrong,” instead of “how to solve the problem.”

If none of this works and it escalates to bullying, take them for a drink and punch them in the face.. Make sure you go to two pubs, as any activity that occurs directly after work, the HR rules apply. Seriously, some of these people are just bullies and don’t think social lie to walk away is better . If they threaten your lively hood and ability to take care of your family . man up. (Bullying seems to be the norm in most companies) Don’t bother with HR, they are there to protect the business from ligation.